Category: Optimization

Page speeds and website performance are more important than ever. You may inadvertently be increasing the amount of time it takes for your website to load, which in turn, can lead to visitor loss. Here are a few quick fixes you can apply to your website that can help your page load speeds!

Large unoptimized images can be a culprit to poor page performance. You may be asking yourself if uploading an unoptimized image can really hurt your page load times, and the answer is it really can. By large images, we are talking about file sizes and not dimensions. Images that are 1 MB and up could start affecting page load times.

How can I ensure my images are not slowing down my website? Here are three quick tips to help you out:

1) Resize your images: Most sites should be responsive to an infinite amount of displays and phones. That being said, you do not need images to be excessive dimensions (ex:5000×2000) to ensure your images are being displayed perfectly. You should try to keep your image dimensions close to the max Height/Width that it will respond to.

2) Choose the right image format: There are a handful of file formats that we use for web. JPEG, GIF, and PNG are the main three that you will see floating around. These can be used interchangeably between one another, but they all have a specific use. When it comes to quality and file size, we recommend using JPEG. JPEG is universally used as it keeps image file size low and keeps its quality if it needs to be compressed.

3) Compress your images: Image files are more complex than they look. Tying into file formats, images store complex data sequences and other segments that can affect the quality and colors of that image. At times though, we can do without certain data. This is where file compression tools come into play and can help us reduce our file size. You can reduce your file sizes by over 70% without affecting their quality! You don’t need a designer to compress your files for you; you can easily use free tools to optimize your images…

Here are Our Recommended Image Compression Tools:

Compressor is an online image compression tool with which you can upload your images instead of taking up space from your computer. After uploading an image into the browser, you will be provided with a before and after of how much space you have saved. It also gives you the option of saving to your Dropbox, Google Drive or just as a regular download.

ImageOptim is a free and open sourced tool with a minimal interface to get the job done. This tool is as simple as dragging and dropping your images in and having a compressed version saved to your desired save location. The only setback is that it is only available for MAC.

One of the more popular online image compression tools currently is Kraken. With the ability to bulk load multiple images and upload zipped folders, Kraken has a speedy compression rate. The one downfall is that it has a file size limit of 1MB which shouldn’t be a huge issue for all users.

If you want a simple image compression tool to compress your JPEG, look no further than optimizilla. It has a very simple interface and provides you with an image vs. image view where you can adjust the quality of your image.

Any web/graphic designer should have this listed as one of their go-to tools. Adobe Photoshop provides the save-for-web option with which you can tweak dimensions and file format, and also help optimize images for websites. As this is typically a paid program, you can also take a look at these free alternatives: GIMP, paint.net andphotops.

You can learn a lot more about site performance and page speeds through Strathcom’s beginner and advanced training in Content Management Systems like WordPress. We’ve got webinars on February 13 and 21 for both beginner- and advanced-level CMS training, and you can sign up below…